How to take six weeks off without stressing even a little bit.
For the next three weeks, I literally worked one hour. And that one hour... So after that day, when I got home, I sent them all the instructions I could, that one hour was just responding to their questions. And they took over my Google AdWords account and they took over my blog and they took over the marketing that I was doing. They took over the SEO that I was doing. They took over customer service. They took over everything I was currently doing. Three weeks later, my wife has the baby, this beautiful little girl Bailey, who just turned 14. And for the next two months, my wife struggled with postpartum depression. And so I just kept not working. It was a little bit more, it was one hour a week because she was allowed to get out of bed now.
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What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back the
Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now, I'm at Lake Powell. I've been
on the boat, the houseboat and jet-skis, and we did a waterboard,
it's a type of Flyboard where you literally feel like Ironman
flying through the sky. We just got done wake surfing, our kids
have been wake surfing. It's been an insane week and I'm here with
my friend, John Jonas. I'll introduce you guys here in a second.
And for me, it was a lot to take a week off. I had no cell phone
access for a week and John hasn't worked in eight years, 12 years.
Just kidding, he's basically taking six weeks off.
He is the person in my life who somehow has figured out a
systemized entire life. So he can just do whatever he wants
whenever he wants. And so that's what we're talking about today is
systemizing outsourcing and whole bunch of other stuff when we come
back from the theme song. All right, so I'm back here. We're on top
of the houseboat and I'm talking to John Jonas. Some of you guys
know John, if not, he is the founder of onlinejobs.ph, which... Actually, do you want to
tell them what it is and tell them about you?
John Jonas: Yeah, thanks man. So when I was early on in my business, I just
realized I needed help and finding help sucked. It was so hard. And
everybody talked about outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing, and I
tried India and it sucked. It did.
Russell: The entire country.
John: Well and then it's like, dude, I have nothing against the
country. But outsourcing there was really hard and there's some
really big cultural reasons why, and I won't get into it, whatever.
And then you have Upwork, which was Elance and oDesk at the time,
which is fine, except the whole system is based around 100%
turnover. And as a small business owner, 100% turnover guaranteed
in your business, that sucks, hiring a contract worker, that's so
stinking hard. So one day I'm talking to John Brizzy, the owner of
backcountry.com. And he says to me, "When you're ready to start
outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines
with it." And I was like, "Huh, really?" And he gave me some
reasons why, and more than just like, "Oh, this is amazing," it
gave me hope that maybe I'd find something different than what I
had experienced before, because that was really the thing was
there's so much loss of hope in outsourcing because it's just a
babysitting job and people that you're outsourcing to suck and they
can only do menial tasks.
And so I hired this guy in the Philippines full-time, which he
gave me a reference to hire someone full-time and I didn't know if
I could do it. It took me two months to hire someone because I
didn't know if I could keep someone busy full-time I didn't know if
I could pay them I didn't know if they could do good work. It was
the most liberating experience in my life. This dude's full-time
job was doing anything I asked him to do. And yeah, dude, that was
amazing. I taught him how to systematize this whole system that I
had completely failed with on Upwork. It was Elance at the time,
but I hired this guy to write articles and he wrote these articles
and sent them back to me. And I was like, "Yes, I got these
articles done," this was on Elance.
And then I realized, "Oh, now the burden falls on me to do the
rest of the work." And that's where most stuff breaks down is when
it falls on you to do the rest of the work. So when I had this guy
in the Philippines, I realized, "Oh no, he can write the article
and then he just worked full-time for me. So I can teach him to do
the posting and the headers and the resource boxes and the links
and I can teach them how SEO works and he can do all the SEO." And
this was like 2005. So since then, I've realized oh yeah, you can
hire amazing people, programmers, designers, social media people,
content writers, data entry people, lead generators, whatever it
is, copywriters, you can hire a really good people. And in the
Philippines, I was paying the company, this is 2005, I was paying
them $750 a month they're paying him $250 a month for full-time
work. So today that same person's probably going to be like $450 a
month straight from you to them because of what online jobs is.
Russell: Because you guys created a platform. Because prior to, so the
first time I hired someone from the Philippines, there was a
company I hired and they... I can't remember name of it. Agents of
Value, yes. Agents of Value, yes. And I was so excited because it
was like 700 bucks you get a full-time employee, which I was paying
American wages prior to everyone and I was freaking out. And then
yeah, like you said, you find that they're only making $250, $300.
And so what John built is a really cool, I wouldn't call it a
directory, it's more than that, but it's a place you go, you sign
up for it, and then there's how many Filipinos are listed there
right now?
John: There's over a million Filipino profiles there. Yeah, so what I
created was what I wanted for myself. So after a couple of years of
hiring people through this agency, I went to them and they said,
"Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster?" I was like, "I want
a content writer." "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster,"
was their response. And agencies, generally, this is how they are.
They're going to three times mark up the salary and then they're
going to give you the same person. They're going to go to online
jobs today and try and find the person... They do, I know they
do.
So I created what I wanted, which was I just want to recruit
some people on my own and I want to hire them and I want to pay
them directly and there's no markup, so there's no salary markup.
And there's no middleman telling me who I need to hire, giving me
someone crappy who doesn't know anything, which is what Agents of
Value did multiple times. And so now I can go and find someone,
find the exact person I want. And it's crazy. I hired a programmer
who was working for IBM and he's so dang good.
Or I found a copywriter, actually, I hired a copywriter who
wrote some ClickFunnels emails. And it's amazing what you can find
on onlinejobs.ph. And the crazy thing about the
Philippines, I had no idea at the time. This is why this guy's
advice was so dang good. And he obviously knew, and I had no idea.
So in the Philippines, there's a culture of honesty and loyalty and
hard work and make people happy. So my guys in the Philippines have
my credit cards, they have access to my email account, they have
access to my servers. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people
hire people in the Philippines and have seen very, very few people
get ripped off. And almost every time when they do, it's because
they tried to get the person to do some work and then not pay the
person.
And obviously, yeah, they're going to try and get paid. And then
there's the loyalty thing. So the Philippines, their culture is
loyal almost to a fault. So when you hire them, they'll never stop
working for you as long as you gain their trust. So the first
person I hired in 2005 still works for me today. Yeah, and he's
amazing. He can do anything. When I hired him, he knew nothing.
Today, he can do anything I want. So the culture makes such a
difference of the Philippines versus elsewhere, especially for a
small business owner.
Russell: All right, so I want to tell a story and I'm not embarrassed,
maybe a little bit. So you and I had a chance to go to Australia to
speak at Mal Emery's event. Do you remember what year that was?
John: 2012.
Russell: Dang. So 2012. And for those of you who know me and know I
wrote a book about the perfect webinar as my things I'm really good
at closing people and selling from the stage and all that kind of
stuff. So John and I fly down to Australia, we both speak on stage
and you destroyed me. It was really embarrassing. I only sold a
handful and John sold everybody in the room literally bought his...
It was insane. But I'm telling you this because there was a story
you told in there that I'm going to mess with the details, but I
want you to share the story with people. Number one, they'll get to
know you a little better. But number two, it's also I think a lot
of you guys have probably heard me or other people talk about
outsourcing and you're like, "Oh yeah," and maybe you hire someone
here or there, but for you, there was something in your life that
happened that made forced you to do it and then that ended up
giving you the freedom that literally we've been here this week,
everyone's stressing out.No one's got cell phone access and John's just having the best
time ever. And you have six weeks in a row vacation time. What week
are we on right now?
John: Four. Week five.
Russell: Week five of six and I'm like one weekend. I'm like, "Well, I'm
good." So anyway, I want you to hear this story because it's
powerful, but also I think I'm hoping you guys hear and realize
that you don't have to wait for something tragic or scary like this
to happen. But if you kind of try to force it in your mind, you can
have something like this happen and give yourself freedom earlier.
So with that said, here's John.
John:So I've worked about 17 hours a week for the last 13, 14 years.
And here's what happened. So my wife is seven months pregnant with
our third child. This is 2007. We went to the doctor, he's run some
tests and he says to my wife, "You have preeclampsia. And if you
don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks,
you're going to have a seizure and you're going to lose this baby."
And to me, obviously, I was there with her and it was a shock. And
on my way home from the doctor's office, I was just thinking, "I'm
working full time and I have to two other kids and she has to be on
strict bed rest. I'm not about to lose a baby over money." So I was
thinking, "What am I going to do?"
So when I get home, I sent an email to two of my guys in the
Philippines. I had two guys in the Philippines at the time and I
sent an email to them. And I just want you to know, as I tell you
this, they had been with me for about 18 months. These were not
guy. I pulled off the street. You're not going to hire someone new
and this is going to work for you. It's going to take some time.
But I told them, "Hey guys, here's my situation. I can't work.
Here's why. I need you to take over everything I'm currently doing
in my business." And so I... Everything, everything.
For the next three weeks, I literally worked one hour. And that
one hour... So after that day, when I got home, I sent them all the
instructions I could, that one hour was just responding to their
questions. And they took over my Google AdWords account and they
took over my blog and they took over the marketing that I was
doing. They took over the SEO that I was doing. They took over
customer service. They took over everything I was currently doing.
Three weeks later, my wife has the baby, this beautiful little girl
Bailey, who just turned 14. And for the next two months, my wife
struggled with postpartum depression. And so I just kept not
working. It was a little bit more, it was one hour a week because
she was allowed to get out of bed now.
And so I spent three months not working basically. And it's
expected to have a disaster with my business and came back to find
my business had grown. And I'm not going to tell you it's because
these guys were running the business. That's not the case. But the
point here is that I had had the right help and my business didn't
crash when I wasn't there. So from there, this is where you'll
really recognize I hope what the possibilities of outsourcing are.
So after these three months, I was like, "Well there's only so many
times in a day you can take your kids to the golf course," and you
get bored. Because that's what I was doing. I was taking my kids to
the golf course twice a day. And so I started designing a business
based around how far can I take this outsourcing thing?
Because I had only had these guys doing menial tasks up to that
point. And now I realized like, "Whoa, they're way better than I
thought they were. And so can I build a business based around them
doing all the work and me just being the CEO?" So I started
designing this business. I'll tell you what it was. We were going
to write reviews about products and post them on our website and
then drive traffic to them and put affiliate links on all the
reviews. So I record myself talking for 45 minutes explaining this
whole thing. And I bought a domain and I sent the domain and my
recording to this guy in Philippines.
And again, he had been working for me for a while and he takes
the domain, sets it up on my hosting account, sets up WordPress and
changes the theme according as I've described and sends it back to
me a couple days later and it was horrible. And I was like, "Oh
crap." So I went back and described it better and better again. And
we did this for about a week until we got it right. He got the
website how I wanted it. It was amazing. So then he wrote the first
review and it was terrible. And I was like, "Oh yeah, this
outsourcing thing isn't as good as I thought it was."
Russell: You're like, "No, I'll take it all to myself." For me, that's
what I've been using. Like, "Well I'm done. I'm just going to
myself." I give up usually at that point.
John: That's not what I did. And because that's not my personality. I
want to see if I can make this thing work really. So I worked with
him through the review. I was like, "Okay, we've got to change this
and this and this. And we've got to get more data from here. And
we've got to do this." So we worked for a couple of weeks, got the
review right. And I never wrote another review. So he had already
done some SEO, but I start teaching him more SEO and he starts
doing SEO and he starts doing some social marketing, even though
social media wasn't really a thing. But we started doing Craigslist
stuff. And we started doing RSS feeds and we started doing
everything that I knew to do at the time, I did. Everything I knew
to implement, I did.
Which today all the things you know to implement would be build
your funnel and start your Dream 100 and run Facebook ads to it and
start doing some SEO maybe and get on a podcast or start a podcast.
All these things that you know you should be doing I was doing,
except I wasn't the one doing them. So that business in the first
month made me about $200. Within three months, it was making three
to $500 a month. Within six months, it was making a thousand
dollars a month, within a year is making me 10 to $15,000 a month.
And this dude in the Philippines, who, again, I told you they're
super loyal and super honest, he built the whole thing. He joined
the affiliate programs.
He starts running Google AdWords on it. Because I taught him how
to do it. He sends me a report every month. "Here's how much money
we spent. Here's how much money we made. Here's what I think I can
do to improve the business and make more money." And that was where
I realized like, "Oh yeah, these aren't just dummies that can only
do menial work. They can only follow exact instructions." No, he
read between the lines so many times he figured out so much stuff.
And I don't want you to think that he built this whole business for
me and I didn't do anything. Because I did. I was the CEO. I knew
what was going on. I knew what had to happen. But I never touched
it. I don't touch WordPress. I don't write content now.
Russell:So let me ask you, so I know that there's people listening right
now who are thinking, "Well why doesn't the guy just make his own
blog and then just do it himself? And then he'll make the 10 grand
a month for himself and not have to just cut you out of it." And
I've thought of that as well. I'm curious why specifically
Filipinos, why that's not an issue for you.
John:So yeah, because in India, that's the first question they ask.
And that's our experience with outsourcing is, "Well what's your
business model here?" I explained to him the business model. In the
Philippines, they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to steal
your business. They don't want to steal your idea. They don't want
to do it on their own. That's too risky for them. They are really
job oriented and they want a job. They want a long-term stable job
that they can take home and reliably take care of their family. And
I've seen that so, so many times. I have people that have worked
for me since 2005 and 2006 and 2008 and nine and 10. And they also
work with me.
Russell: Awesome, okay, my last question for you then is I think we had
this conversation last year. So John's my Lake Powell buddy. And
it's our third time renting house boat together, fourth time on the
lake together. But anyway. Last year we had this conversation, I'm
not sure if you remember it, but it was impactful to me because for
me, those who know me, I'm a perfectionist, especially comes to my
funnels and copy and design and everything's going to be reviewed
by me because anyway, I'm super annoying that way. But our stuff
does really well. And so I'm always thinking it has to be perfect
to go live and get shipped out there and actually be a live
thing.
And last year was talking to you about it. And your philosophy
is obviously different than mine. You were more, do you remember
this conversation we had? And you were talking about how you're
like 80% is it's fine. The extra 20% is... Do you remember this
conversation at all? I'd love to get just your mindset on that
because it's something I could use, but probably other people as
well where it doesn't have to be 100% to make money. It's got to be
close.
John: So there are some things where it needs to be 100%. But most
things, it's more important to get it done than to get it done
perfectly. And so for me, my philosophy is ship, get it out there.
So just before we left, we're driving down here and I checked my
project management and saw that they had completed this big long
piece of content that we had. And I said to them, "I'm not going to
review this, but publish it because I'm sure it's good enough. You
guys are good and publish it." And when I get back, maybe I'll
review it. Maybe I won't, I don't know. Maybe the task will be gone
and I'll never see it. But to me, just getting it out there and
having people see it is more likely to tell you the problems with
it than I am to tell the problems by reading it myself and to
creating a bottleneck myself to let me give you 16 more things that
I don't think are perfect.
Even though you guys think it's perfect, there's three other
people that have seen it, and I don't think so, but they do, which
tells me maybe I'm wrong. I also don't have, and this is a
personality thing, I don't have the design eye that you do and I
don't care as much. I want people to see it and I want people read
it and ship it, get alive. We ship software with bugs all the time
because then it's live and then people will instantly tell you,
"Oh, this is a problem." "Oh, okay. We'll fix it. Sweet."
Russell: As opposed to figuring out all the problems, mistakes on your
own. Oh man. Well I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, it's a
little different, but I don't normally interview. I don't even know
John, you're like the second person to ever be on my podcast
besides me. But I think it's good for everyone to understand. So
for those who are in some part of their business where they're
trying to think of if they can use outsourcing more, join Online
Jobs, and this is not a paid ad. I get nothing from this other than
as long as online jobs keeps making money off of a boat buddy at
Lake Powell, otherwise I've got to pay for this whole thing by
myself. But there's no advertising, but let them know how Online
Jobs works. Because it's different. It's not like Agents of Value.
You're hiring and paying them and could you walk them through how
it works and wants to get the count and how to set it all up and
everything?
John: Yeah, so Online Jobs is kind of like indeed.com, but for the
Philippines. So you go on and you post a job and it's free to post
a job. And then depending on your job, you'll get a few or hundreds
of job applicants. And if you get hundreds of job applicants,
that's a problem, you can't go through hundreds of applicants. That
sucks. But you'll get a bunch of applicants. And then you can see
the applications for free. You can do all that for free. You just
can't contact anybody. You don't get anybody's contact information
until you pay. And it's $69 for a month and then you get to contact
as many people as you want, really. Or you can reply to everybody
who sent you a job application, if you want. And then you just
interview them, you're going to use their Disk profile.
Russell talks about Disk profiles. And I think it's amazing.
Almost everybody on there has a Disk profile and you're going to
send them emails and ask them tons of questions. And here's a
little bit of advice, don't do a Skype interview right off the bat.
That's the first thing everyone wants to do is get on the phone
with them. And that's the last thing you should be doing when you
do interviews with people in the Philippines. They don't want to do
it. So do that at last when you've narrowed it down to three. You
can give a test task. You're completely on your own. Every
application will come to your email inbox if you want. It's your
Gmail inbox. They'll also be in your online jobs inbox, but then
you interview them and you hire them and you pay them. And we don't
take a cut of any of that.
If you're interested in more, I have, very similar to Russell's
one funnel away, I have the one VA away challenge. So I will walk
you through the hiring process and I guarantee you'll find a great
person if you go through my process at one VA way. It's my process
of how I hire great people. I never think, "I don't know if I'm
going to find someone good this time or not." I'm going to find
someone good. I know I am because I've done it so many times.
Russell: So onevaaway.com?
John: onevaaway.com
Russell: Awesome, all right. And I'm going to product this. So obviously
I have click funnels that whole business and there's support and
there's team and everything. But we started building some of these
side businesses and some fun projects I was working on and all of
them have customers coming in now and customer support and all
these things. And I was like, "Aaaa!” and so I asked John, I'm
like, "Hey, what would you do if you're me?" He's like, "Dude,
you're an idiot. Of course go to Online Jobs." So we did, sent them
to the count, we hired three new Filipinos, they're on a Slack
channel with us and they have access to our help desk. Our help
desk has all these little sub companies we're building and they're
cross-training on all the different products and they're awesome.
Every morning they check it on Skype, like, "Good morning, we're
here."
And then they check out at night like, "We're done," and they
have questions asked in Slack, and then they're just cross-training
all of our products. And so we'll just keep adding more products in
there and they're supporting all of them and it's amazing. And
we've got three right now. We'll probably have more as we start
growing and stuff like that. And I'm getting really excited about
bringing in more to do more tasks. Everybody can do funnels. You
guys are training now on a lot of them are doing funnels, a lot of
them are doing copywriting, a lot of them are doing a lot of other
stuff too.
So anyway, it's exciting. So go to onlinejobs.ph or onevaaway.com. And with that said, hope you guys
enjoyed this episode. Get your mind thinking about outsourcing and
the Philippines and a whole bunch of cool things like that. So in
fact, one time you gave me... So I've done this four or five times.
We build up huge scenes. At one time I had this guy named Mateo we
hired from the Philippines and he built a team of like 30 writers
for me, back when we were doing SEO really, really hard. We were
cranking on it. Anyway, it's fun to do and fun to learn and to get
to know some really, really cool people. So anyway, hope that helps
you guys appreciate you all and we'll see you guys on the next
episode. Bye.
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